In addition to the essential skillsets for survival that I have written extensively about, there is another fundamental foundation for collapse survival that needs to be gone over, and that is the development of good situational awareness. While it could be considered a skillset of its own, situational awareness really plays into all skills and activities, and will be vital for post-collapse survival.
Seeing it all coming
It is incredibly critical to be able to recognize when a social breakdown or other dangerous situation is about to begin around you. I think, in some cases, it is more important to recognize that situation and the moment it begins than it is to be physically prepared for it to happen. That might sound a bit crazy, but I believe knowing when things are starting to turn bad can give you the best chance of escaping from it. All the preparation in the world won’t help very much if you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and never see it coming.
That being said, even when it is too late for an immediate escape, if you are consciously aware that you are in a life-or-death survival situation, you will think and act differently. You will make different decisions, think twice about dealing with others around you, either to ask for or to offer help, and you will be fully in the zone of saving your own ass. Game-on time.
So, how do you know when things are about to get sideways? Well, it all starts with one of the most important mental abilities for survival – situational awareness.
Situational awareness is often discussed, but few people know what it truly represents and why it’s tremendously important. It represents the perception and understanding an individual has of the environment around them, including its hazards, risks, and current activity. It also consists of how a person anticipates that the environment around them will change as a result of their own actions.
It’s essential to understand situation awareness in the context of everyday life not just during an emergency. The whole point is to be able to tell when such an emergency is about to unfold around you, not just to react after it already has. Thinking proactively and understanding what to look out for can be the difference between safety and danger in almost every situation.
In the simplest terms, the meaning of situational awareness is being aware of what’s going on around you so you can anticipate what is about to happen and take decisive action, ideally before whatever “it” is starts happening. By being situationally aware, you’re cognizant and continually aware of your surroundings at any given moment.
As a term, it’s usually associated with the military, law enforcement, and the more professional criminal types, basically the type of people who practice combat situational awareness. It has become popular as a term because of its links with people who make combat-related decisions effectively and efficiently in hostile environments.
While it has origins in tactical decision-making, the reality is that situational awareness principles can be applied to everyone, regardless of age, where you are, or what you happen to be doing.
Situational awareness is about conditioning yourself into the mindset of consciously thinking about and knowing what you’re doing and observing what is present and happening in your surroundings. Even if you are just making your usual trip to the grocery store, cruising the same old route to work, or going out for a morning jog, it pays dividends to practice situational awareness. No matter what activity you are engaged in, you should always be observant and conscious even if it is just some routine thing that seems harmless or has always been danger-free in the past.
By maintaining your awareness of the situation you’re less likely to be overwhelmed by events and actions which can stifle your decision-making ability. Decisions, especially those quick and critical ones, are made by the brain based on what information it is processing and what your intuition is sensing about it. By synchronizing and balancing both of these processes in your conscious mind, you can make better-informed decisions and take faster pre-emptive actions based on the reality of the situation at hand. This ability extends even to decisions beyond the immediate perception of possible threats from people and environmental risks or hazards.
So, how can you develop good situational awareness? The above is just a quick explanation of what situational awareness is and how important it will be to develop the ability until it becomes an instinctual thing. Let’s look at some ways you can go about getting yourself to that point and learn how to increase situational awareness in any environment. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. The best way to start is by looking for ways in which you can practice such awareness in everyday settings. Here are a few ideas to that end.
Be Present
Practice staying mindful and being present “in the moment.” When you are observant of your surroundings, your senses should all be fully engaged. Make an effort to hear, smell, and see everything you can in your environment. Watch people, without staring of course, but take note of them, always looking for nonverbal cues. Body language and facial expressions can tell you a lot about how people are feeling, and potentially give away what they are about to do. When speaking, does their body language align with what they’re saying? Most people have an easy giveaway that they’re lying, nervous or angry. Observing people around you and watching how they act or express themselves is a great way to understand what’s going on around you.
Being present is probably the one thing that has taken the biggest hit within humanity during the course of becoming civilized. People just don’t pay attention to their surroundings much anymore. They are focused on tasks like work or driving, multitasking in their heads about all the things they have going on in their lives, or so engrossed in their phones and online activities that they will literally walk right into walls or traffic without noticing. This is one of those civilized behaviors that you need to break free of, and it is of the utmost importance.
So much bad that happens to people only happens because they were not being present in the situation. And it is because they have grown used to feeling safe and secure in civilized surroundings. We don’t have to be like deer watching for wolves at all times anymore, or so we have come to believe. And, when bad things do start to happen around us, well, we just have to hang on and ride it out or hide and wait until the cops or the fire department comes to save us.
But that feeling of safety is just a false sense of security. The safety doesn’t actually exist, except in our minds. The flames are already raging when the firetrucks arrive. The thief has already robbed us when the police get there to take the report of it. Whatever was going to be lost will already be lost. And for some, what is lost is their lives or those of their loved ones.
So, be present. See the criminals coming before they get to you. Douse the flames while they are small before they can grow. Be aware of your situation, at all times.
Make Mental Notes
Take note of important details in the area. Mentally catalog them as you become aware of each one. Cataloging is another great way to practice noticing and remembering things that will come in handy in an emergency. Identifying things like entry and exit points in a room or building, nearby items that could be used as makeshift tools or weapons, and obstructions that could serve as cover or concealment.
Do a little threat assessment in your mind when you come into an area. Is there convenient cover available? Visible surveillance measures? Suspicious positioning of obstructions that could hide an ambush? People whose clothing or demeanor does not match their apparent activity. A list like this could go on forever, but you get the idea.
You want to see everything that can be seen, comprehend what it means, and remember that it was there.
Cut Out Distractions
Distractions can’t always be eliminated everywhere, but you can do your best to limit them. Being distracted from your environment means you are not paying attention to it, and that opens you up to being more vulnerable, and possibly to be chosen as a target for something in the first place. This is the real world, and so you might have to carry on a conversation with someone you are with, or even over the phone sometimes, but you can still keep your wits about you. Just don’t be that person walking along the street staring down at your phone clutched in both hands while texting, watching videos, or shitposting on Reddit.
Distractions can come in many forms, but part of having the right mindset for situational awareness is recognizing that whatever you are doing, that is the distraction. Looking for that perfect birthday gift for your significant other? Typing up a critical report for tomorrow’s meeting? Trying to remember a recipe’s ingredients while shopping for dinner? Those are not supposed to be your focus.
I know, that’s a bit contrary to how society makes us want to do things, but remember, we are talking about living in a time when society has disappeared or become fundamentally changed. In a post-collapse environment, staying alive is your focus. Everything else is a distraction from that, which is why it is so important to develop your situational awareness to the point of “always-on” instinctual behavior.
Now, that doesn’t mean you should ignore your work or shopping or any of the other regular activities of civilized life. But it does mean that, at first, you need to constantly keep yourself and your actions in perspective. Early on it will be a conscious action you will have to take. I mean, who actually tries to pay attention to noises from the street while also sitting in on a work meeting? No one does. Well, the collapse-aware individual does, for certain.
Over time, and with practice, it will become like something in the background of your mind, and that is what you want to happen, you just have to work at it. Social conditioning is deeply ingrained in us from birth, and it can be very hard to break. We want to feel safe, and we don’t want to constantly worry about everything happening around us. Having that peace of mind luxury is part of what is so great about civilization.
The problem is that it leaves us unprepared when civilization has a little hiccup. Such as 9/11. Or the invasion of Ukraine by Russian soldiers. Or the mass shooting that happened…well, that happens just about everywhere these days. When you find yourself in one of those situations, you don’t want to be the domesticated animal, panicking and praying for the shepherd to come rescue you from the wolves. You want to be one of the wolves, and you want to both sense that danger coming and be ready for it when it arrives.
Trust your instincts.
Luckily for us, nature has provided us with the tools we need to be one of those wolves. We have the instincts of millions of years of evolution in hostile environments at our disposal. They are not gone, they haven’t been “bred out of us” by civilized living, such a thing takes much longer to go away than we have been working on it. No, all we have done is suppress them. Buried them deep down inside and let them wither away like a muscle that has not seen use. All we have to do is begin to use those muscles again, to build them up, and before long they will come right back to the forefront of our being.
You can still feel them sometimes, they haven’t faded completely. Often, we are actively ignoring them in spite of their warnings, because it is inconvenient to stop and evaluate all the time, and especially to take extra actions.
Sure, this guy might have some “red flags,” but no one else asked me to the dance… Yeah, this old staircase seems like it could collapse any minute, but I really want to see what’s up there… Man, the campfire has pretty much died down to ashes, there’s probably no need to douse it, and it is super cold out there… Damn, that guy with the overcoat seems pretty out of place and sketchy, but I’ve been waiting months for this concert…
That is how people find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ignoring their instincts when something just seemed not quite right. Rather than repeat such a brush-off, what you need to do is grab those thoughts immediately when they occur, bring them to the forefront of your focus, and re-evaluate your situation and surroundings to see if the danger is real.
If you feel uneasy about someone, something, or someplace, you can remove yourself from danger by paying attention to what your animal instincts are telling you. Even if it looks like there’s no danger, take that instinctive warning your lizard brain is sending to you and use it as a signal to recheck your surroundings, and to get ready or positioned to take action should it become necessary.
The “Lizard Brain” is a term used to refer to the most primitive part of our brain, where the instincts that warn us of danger reside. Some also refer to it as the “backbrain.” This older part of the brain helps us to react to a threat in an immediate and automatic way, without the rest of the brain processing information, thus gaining a split-second advantage that has allowed our survival for millions of years. That is also called the “fight or flight” response. Today, we live in a world in which deadly threats are not exactly the order of the day. We have our predators pretty well-controlled, and we don’t live in such a hostile environment, this “survival instinct” has somewhat devolved. You could say we have been over-civilized and become conditioned to ignore such instincts. We are no longer the wild animals that we once were. Modern humans are, sadly, quite domesticated. And that is not going to help us when civilization collapses, or even if it just goes haywire for a day or two. Getting in touch with your inner animal is a big part of situational awareness and something you will need to rely on in a post-collapse environment.
Just about every action that you take in a collapse situation is going to involve the use of situational awareness, even just sitting and doing nothing at your camp somewhere. It needs to be grown to the level of being your normal instinct, as opposed to something that you consciously engage in. The post-collapse world will not be like the civilized one we have come to know so well. Some people already are masters of situational awareness, people like cops out on patrol, criminals engaged in illicit activities, and soldiers maneuvering on the battlefield. In those examples, that situational awareness is what keeps them safe in some of the few hostile environments left to mankind in the age of modern civilization.
For now, start learning to recognize and listen to those little twinges inside, and outwardly look around to try and identify what has them pinging the inside of your brain. Knowing how to trust your instincts will help you be more aware of what is going on around you, as well as help you to react a lot quicker to whatever may come.
To Sum It Up
There are so many ways to practice situational awareness, and the above list barely scratches the surface. Really, it is just a starting point for you to begin your development and then continue on with constant practice until you no longer even remember that you are doing it. But, mark my words, you will see this material again as I will be referencing it many times because it applies to almost everything. There are risks everywhere we go. Even now, in the comfort of a civilized environment, you should not deny that. Society would like to have you believe that you live in a civilized world, where you are protected by the police or government and the bad aspects of humanity are kept in check by the rule of law and so forth. And most of the time that is true. But the operative word there is “most.” The reality is that the only person who is truly responsible for your safety and survival is you. Survivors deal with reality. They train and prepare themselves and others about how to address the absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal. Situational awareness is the single biggest factor in being able to spot the signs of an impending incident and knowing how you can react to it to save and protect yourself when all those civilized protections fall apart.
If you do nothing else, learn how to use what your animal ancestors gave you.